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"You needn't be anxious. Science is young yet. It's got to keep on
growing for a few generations. We know enough now to know we don't know
enough yet.... But the time is coming, all the same. You won't see the
time. But, between ourselves, you rich men and party bosses, with your
natural play of the passions and patriotism and religion and so forth,
have made rather a mess of things; haven't you? These Underways! And all
that sort of thing. Some of us have a sort of fancy that in time we may
know enough to take over a little more than the ventilation and drains.
Knowledge keeps on piling up, you know. It keeps on growing. And there's
not the slightest hurry for a generation or so. Some day--some day, men
will live in a different way." He looked at Bindon and meditated.
"There'll be a lot of dying out before that day can come."
Bindon attempted to point out to this young man how silly and irrelevant
such talk was to a sick man like himself, how impertinent and uncivil it
was to him, an older man occupying a position in the official world of
extraordinary power and influence. He insisted that a doctor was paid to
cure people--he laid great stress on "paid"--and had no business to
glance even for a moment at "those other questions." "But we do," said
the young man, insisting upon facts, and Bindon lost his temper.
His indignation carried him home. That these incompetent impostors, who
were unable to save the life of a really influential man like himself,
should dream of some day robbing the legitimate property owners of
social control, of inflicting one knew not what tyranny upon the world.
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